Abstract
Manufacturing metallic components for structural applications can be very challenging. For example, harsh environments such as high temperatures or pressures require metals to maintain fully dense homogeneous microstructures stable over long periods of time. This is particularly true for titanium-aluminum (TiAl) alloys used for jet engine turbine blades or car turbocharger wheels, where temperatures can go above 700 °C or 1100 °C, respectively. If the efficiency of TiAl alloys at high temperatures is well established, they suffer from strong limitations when produced via conventional manufacturing techniques such as casting or forging. In fact, they can result in highly nonhomogeneous microstructures often containing defects such as pores or presenting undesirable soft phases or texture. This often requires complex post-processing in addition to an expensive machining required for obtaining the final component shape.
In attempting to go beyond these limitations, we use the SPS to sinter near-net shape turbine blades in TiAl where both shape and final microstructure are controlled. In this chapter, we first expose the motivations and current state of TiAl in the industry. Second, we present the path followed to design a TiAl alloy for high temperature application with a special attention to the advantage of SPS. We report microstructures and mechanical properties and how they are affected by the sintering parameters. Third, we focus on sintering complex shapes by SPS, describing the different experiments conducted to understand the powder densification behavior and control the temperature gradients in complex geometries. Finally, we demonstrate that by applying the knowledge acquired previously, we densified two types of near-net shape turbine blades in TiAl by SPS.
To summarize, we show that metallic components with complex geometries can be obtained by SPS, in one processing step, with an as-SPS microstructure providing optimal mechanical properties without the need of further thermomechanical treatments.
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Acknowledgments
This study has been conducted in the framework of the cooperative project “IRIS-ANR-09-MAPR-0018-06” supported by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), which is acknowledged. A part of this work was performed under the auspices of the US Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under the contract No. DE-AC52-07NA27344. Authors thank the PNF2 for providing SPS facilities (Plateforme Nationale de Frittage Flash/CNRS in Toulouse, France). Frédéric Bernard (ICB), Nikhil Karnatak (Mecachrome), and their teams are greatly acknowledged for providing support on sintering large components. Marc Thomas (ONERA) is thanked for the fruitful discussions and Lise Durand (CEMES) for developing FEM models. Yannick Le Berre (Chastagner-Delaize) and his team are thanked for producing graphite parts.
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Voisin, T., Monchoux, JP., Couret, A. (2019). Near-Net Shaping of Titanium-Aluminum Jet Engine Turbine Blades by SPS. In: Cavaliere, P. (eds) Spark Plasma Sintering of Materials. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05327-7_25
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05327-7_25
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